With over 30,000 paid books on the iBookstore, UK-based author Adrian Dawson has stormed straight into the top ten with his debut novel, Codex. The novel was placed as high as Number 6 in total UK sales in the ebook’s first week on sale through Apple’s iBookstore and consistently maintains its position within the Top Ten.

Adrian’s novel follows the struggles of Chess Grandmaster turned IT entrepreneur and philanthropist Jack Bernstein as he battles to find the truth about his daughter’s death. Drawn into a global game of chess in which he has been an unwitting pawn for over a decade, a complex web of deceit and betrayal unravels to reveal that all is not as it would appear. Fast paced and with a fierce array of coded clues delivered throughout, the novel is clearly finding favour with a large number of UK iPad and iPhone readers.

Joanne Sayer, owner of Last Passage Publishing who represent Adrian's work revealed; “This is fantastic news for Adrian, who recently attended Book Expo America in New York to publicise Codex prior to its publication in print in November. Our decision to release Codex in eBook format prior to release in print, was really about testing the market for Adrian’s work and eBook sales in general, but with the iBookstore it has proven to be an even greater success than we anticipated.

Pricing Codex at £2.49 will no doubt have played a part in its meteoric rise through the charts, where it is currently sitting at No 2 in the “Mysteries and Thrillers” section having been kept from the top spot only by Peter James, whose £1.99 Short Story “The Perfect Murder” has held the No 1 spot in Mysteries and Thrillers since mid June.”

Codex is available in all ebook formats and will be available in print from 4 November.

At the time of writing, the novel holds the #6 slot on the UK iBookstore.

Am I mistaken, or isn't this spam? I mean on any other forum I use, registering and making one post like this and nothing else since then would be considered spam. Unless I'm missing something??

Originally Posted by wingnut1

Am I mistaken, or isn't this spam? I mean on any other forum I use, registering and making one post like this and nothing else since then would be considered spam. Unless I'm missing something??

If you think someone is posting something inappropriate, use the "Report Post" option and let the staff know. They can't be everywhere and monitor every single post as it comes in, so they really do count on us to give them a heads up. Ultimately, the decision to allow it or delete it is, of course, theirs.

Well despite the attempted hype the description is a complete turn off.
Good luck to him though.

@wingnut1. Whilst you may see our post as spam, we did not feel it was, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it was indeed iPad news and therefore it was effectively a press release to people who have an interest in all things iPad, such as the readers of this forum. At Last Passage we read lots of posts that are effectively on-topic press releases. Our news was targeted whereas spam, for the most part, is not. Viagra anyone?

More importantly, however, we felt that the news, whether or interest to prospective readers of Codex or not, was definitely an inspiring article for any aspiring writer or small publisher looking to release their work onto the iPad. The iPad is widely accepted, along with the Kindle, as being a game changer in terms of publishing, and Adrian's story will hopefully inspire more writers to use the new technology available to launch their work into the wider marketplace. If they do not have access to success stories such as Adrian's then they may never have the inspiration they may need to make the leap. I think that the deny them that by labeling a highly relevant iPad related post (which you can always choose not to read, of course) as 'spam' is a little trite. As an iPad fan, I thought you would have liked to hear that, just this once, a smaller company was showing the bigger corporations, with the iPad's help, how it's done.

It goes without saying that if the moderators of the forum share your views, then we accept their decision and are behind any decisions to remove this post. What I hope, however, is that small companies such as ourselves, whether publishers or app developers, can retain a small portion of respectable forums such as this to share good, and often insightful, news.

Responses on other forums worldwide have been 100% supportive.

@Hasty. Codex is certainly not everyone's cup of tea, but thanks for wishing him well.

Are there any independent reviews of this book?

Hi King Hal

At the moment the only truly independent reviews, though not from "official" sources, are those to be found on the iBookstore itself or on the Kindle store at Amazon.

On the iBookstore, 88% of the 48 people who have rated the novel have given it four stars or more out of five, with a 65% five star rating. People don't seem as keen to review on Amazon, but those who have (five in total) have given it five stars, so we're very pleased. The problem we have at the moment is that very few "official" reviewers are interested in "digital only" books. That part of the industry is, as yet, unchanged it seems. It is our intention to seek official reviews when the book is launched in print in November as the early digital release was really just our way of testing the marketplace.

If there are any official/respected reviewers out there who would like to take a look at Codex, however, they need only drop me a line for a review copy.

Thanks for that.